15 Best Ways to Get Rid of Voles

The vole is a little rodent that looks very much like a mouse. They grow to be about 7 inches long, and have very much the same appearance is what you would find in the common mouse, with the exception of being as large as a rat.

While they may be rather cute little critters, voles pose a series of potential problems for your home. As like any other kind of rodent, they will chew on items around your home, bring diseases and parasites along with them, and leave a mess behind. This is why you want to take special precautions to ensure that you do all that you can to keep them away from your home. If you are looking for methods on how to get rid of voles, here are 15 of them that you want to try.

1. Garlic

We often think of garlic as a deterrent against vampires, but the truth remains that this natural product works quite well not only in helping you to get rid of voles, but this will also work as a means on how to get rid of moles as well.

By placing garlic around the outside of your home or property, this can become an extremely effective means to deter these rodents away. They find the smell abhorrent, making it a fantastic means to keep these animals away. Best of all, they pose no kind of health risk to you, your family, or your friends, and they don’t damage the property in any way. This can be a fantastic means to keeping the voles away in a rather cheap one at that.

2. Hot Sauce/Hot Peppers

Garlic is one kind of product that can have an extremely negative effect on voles, causing them to stay away from your home. It is the smell of the garlic that is quite irritating to them causes them to stay away. However, this is not the only kind of natural product that you can use that will have the same kind of effect.

You can also have a great deal of success by using either a mixture you create yourself using hot jalapeno peppers or by purchasing hot sauce to use. By placing these products around your property line or around the outside of your home, you can have an extremely successful deterrent that will keep these animals away. Not only does it smell bad to them, but the heat is actually an air attend on their paws as well, causing them to flee from your land.

3. Poison

On the other end of the spectrum, there is poison that you can purchase that can be very effective in killing off these creatures. Not only can you find poisons that work well in killing off the voles inside of your house, but they work just as effectively outside. This is really what a lot of people have turned to as a means of getting rid of these rodents.

Before deciding to implement this idea, there are some things that you need to take into account. First of all, poisoning these rodents means that you are likely to have a group of voles that are left dying and decaying around your property. This can lead to parasites and bacteria becoming a real nuisance for you, as well as becoming an attraction for other animals. You also have to worry about your own pet or your kids eating the poison and becoming sick or dying. This may be an effective technique, but it is one that you should use with extreme caution.

4. Repellants

Just as garlic can be quite effective in helping you in your solution on how to get rid of voles, so can repellents that you can purchase. These commercial products offer you a deterrent by providing the same caustic kind of odor that keeps the voles from wanting to come onto your property. How effective they are is based upon the size of area you need to cover in the amount of wind and rain you get, but they can be extremely effective in helping you to keep these animals away.

5. Gravel

A very simple way of keeping these rodents away is to add gravel to the soil around your property. These animals love to dig and so by placing gravel into the soil you make it incredibly difficult for them to have success in digging around your yard. This can be a highly effective deterrent in keeping these animals off of your property, because they will find it difficult to maneuver freely.

6. Live Trapping

Trapping is one option that you can always use, especially if you are someone who desires to not terminate the lives of these rodents. Using a live trap allows you to capture the vole and be able to move it to another location where you can set it free. The benefits of live trapping are that it not only is a humane option, but there are many traps out there that enable you to be able to capture up to 15 voles at the same time. By using a suitable bait you can have a great deal of success trapping these animals, and this will enable you to humanely take them to another location and release them and not be bothered by them anymore.

7. Lethal Trapping

If trapping sounds like a great idea to you, but you don’t want to be humane about it, you can choose several lethal traps that are available out there as well. Many of these are extremely inexpensive for you to be able to purchase, and they will have an immediate effect on ending the lives of these rodents in no time at all. Most are safe for your family and your pets, so you don’t have to worry about any ill effects that can come from using this kind of trap.

8. Vibration Devices

Technology is quickly becoming a means that people are using if they want to know how to get rid of voles. That may not seem like a logical way to go about doing things, but as modern technology has been advancing, scientists and pest control agents have found different means to be able to use to keep voles away.

One of the best out there is the use of a vibration device. Consider the fact that voles and moles like taking burrow underneath the ground to maneuver their way around your yard. A vibration device can make it difficult for them to dig and can actually cause their tunnels to collapse on them, causing them to leave from around your yard. These can be highly effective, and the best part is that they have no detrimental effect on your own animals or your children. It can be a bit costly to run this device for a long period of time, but if you find you are having a difficult time keeping these rodents away it may be the best option for you.

9. Sound Devices

Just as the vibration devices were a technological advancement you could use against each rodents, so are sound devices. By playing a high-pitched sound you can actually cause the animal to be irritated and leave away from your property. This can be an effective technique, but it can also have the same negative impact on your own patents. While this can work, understand that there are some consequences that come along with it as well.

10. Your Pet

Believe it or not, your own pet can be a great deterrent in getting rid of these pests. Dogs naturally will hunt after voles and moles, scaring them away from your yard, especially if you have a larger size dog. If you consider that your German Shepherd, Labrador, or other dog will do a lot of digging to get at whatever has peaked its interest, then it is easy to see how they can be an incredible deterrent in scaring away these rodents from your house or property. Your cat can have the same kind of effect.

11. Make Some Noise!

One of the best ways to deter away any kind of wild animal is by using some kind of device that creates a great deal of noise. Noise is a natural deterrent, because most wild animals are looking to enter onto a property in relative anonymity.

Understand that this doesn’t take some kind of huge air one or something. Often, it can be something as simple as a group of cans that you have tied together that will battle when the wind blows, a series of spinner fans that make a whooshing noise when the wind blows on them or the like. These kind of things make enough noise to deter away these rodents from wanting to come onto your property.

12. Neem oil

If you have not heard of this kind of oil before you are not alone. Neem oil doesn’t actually deter the vole away itself. What it does, is deter common sources of food that moles and voles like to eat, such as grubs. By placing this kind of oil around your property, it will deter away these insects, leaving an important food source off of your land. This will help you to stop these rodents from coming back to your property.

13. Castor Oil

If you are looking for an oil that is a great way on how to get rid of voles, then this is a good one to look into. By adding about a cup of the castor oil to 2 tablespoons of dish soap and a gallon of water, you can create a great repellent that will keep these animals away. By getting the sprayer that you would use to kill insects or weeds, you can spray this concoction all over your yard and have a great impact on keeping these rodents away.

There are a lot of great benefits out of using castor oil. It starts with the fact that they are not toxic to you or your family, not even to plants that are on your property either. Plus, because it is an oil, rains do not wash it away as might occur with other kinds of products you can use. This is another great reason why you may want to consider using this option, and may want to use it even if you are employing some other kind of option.

14. Plants

You should be aware that there are several different kinds of plants you can grow around your yard that will also act as a sensational deterrent and means for you if you are wanting to know Volesor voles on your property. Besides garlic, you can use such things as chocolate lilies or castor bean plants. Both of these will have a phenomenal effect on keeping these rodents off your land, and will do wonders because they actually deter some other kinds of wild critters as well. It’s a true winner if you decide to go with it.

15. A Fence

Another obstacle you can use is to put up some kind of fence around your property that will keep this animal from being able to get its way into your yard. There are two challenges with this, however. The first of these is that these are rather small animals, so you need to use of fense that has very small space so that the animal is unable to get its way through.

In addition, these are burrowing animals. That means that they can dig their way underneath your fence and into your yard. If you are going to put a barrier like this, it is important that you dig a trench at least 12 inches below the surface of the ground, and then barrier fence that depth. This will keep both moles and voles from being able to get onto your land and will be a great deterrent that can be quite successful.